
■ 'p^ 



/8^€> 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



016 085 225 2 




KANSAS-SLAVERY— THE LECOMPTON CONSTrCUTION. 



SPEECH 



OF 



\y 



HON. SIDNEY DEAN, OF CONNECTICUT. 



Delivered in the House of Representatives, March 25th, 1858. 



Mr. Chairman, I desire to submit a few re- 
marks, which have been very hastily prepared. 
Such is the a^prressive nature of Slavery, that 
it was the early policy of our Government to 
confine it within metes and bounds. Confessed 
by correct jurists of every age to be a crea- 
ture of posiiive municipal law, in defiance of 
the laws of nature and of the laws of God, it 
was the deliberate judgment of the venerated 
sires of our revolutionary history, that it should 
sustain its existence — if existence it should 
have — by the statute laws of the independent 
States. V/hile this policy was pursued, the 
people of the nonsiaveholding States washed 
their hands in innocency of this (to them) crime 
against the laws of God and the rights of man. 
Hedged in by State sovereignty, it was as clear- 
ly beyond the jurisdiction of the other States, 
as though it were a foreign Government in 
some island of the sea. When the man was 
transformed into a chattel, a brute, a thing, by 
the law of force, or, what is its equivalent, a 
statute law embodying the power of a sovereign 
State, he could do no less than submit to the 
prisoner's chain, unless by a successful revolu- 
tion he emancipated himself. But when he 
passed the barriers of that law, then by the 
higher law of nature and of God his chains of 
servitude fell off, and he walked the earth a 
freeman. I understand this to have been the 
settled doctrine of the country until a very re- 
cent period. 

In the instrument which confederated the thir- 
teen States, and made them an empire of sov- 
ereignties, a single clause was admitted, provi- 
ding for the rendition of persons who should, by | 



flight, defraud others of labor or service which 
was their rightful due. Beyond this single 
point, tortured of late into an implied power 
in one man to claim another as a slave upon 
soil foreign to his State, the Constitution is 
silent, and guiltless of the barbarous and un- 
christian doctrine that one man can rightfully 
chattelize another. Like the several free-State 
sovereignties, it stood, with the Declaration of 
Independence, the embodiment of the doctrine 
of universal Freedom, the practical ^pounder 
of the great, primal, God-given, " self-evident 
truth, that all men were created free and 
equal," having an impartial endowment of 
rights. These were asserted to be the glorious 
trinity— life, liberty, and the pursuit of that 
happiness which is the desire of all. 

Such, sir, from the nature of those instru- 
ments, and from cotemporaaeous testimony, I 
understand to be the great principles which un- 
derlie our system of government. The people 
of my State, sir, hold those views to-day. 
Taught them by their revolutionary sires, and 
by that written history of the country with 
which almost every youth among us is as fa- 
miliar as is any gentleman upon this floor, they 
cherish them, and will abide by them. Anti- 
Slavery they are ; Anti-Slavery they glory in 
being ; unbought by the offers of political syco- 
phants, unsullied by the seductions of cotton 
and commerce, and the wealth which they 
impart ; uninfluenced by the crazy threats of 
fratricidal fanatics who proclaim disunion, or 
unsubdued by any fear. 

Sir, my constituents, and the State which I 
have the pride of representing in part, ask noth" 



ing more of their sister sovereignties, than that 
they abide by the terms of the original com- 
pact. Their history is a liie-lonc^ pledge of 
their fealty to it. Bnt with the crazy scheme 
of the Slavery-extenders of this day they have 
no sympathy, and to the doctrine they will 
grant no quarter. They have from time to time 
acquiesced in those compromise measures which 
have been adopted, with the ex pectation that each 
one was to be the last. When the black tide 
of Slavery has thrown another and still another 
surge far up upon the free shore of our con- 
federated dominion, they have protested against 
the sacrilege in language becoming to free- 
men, and demanded a cesHation of these at 
tacks. But when the leading spirits of the na- 
tion have, through expediency, proposed a mu- 
tual yielding, in order to give a common repose, 
the citizens of my State have been the Grst to 
acquiesce, while at the same time they changed 
noi, in a single iota, their views of the nature 
of this evil, or its true municipal position in ihie 
country. No single step has been taken in this 
agi^reesive march of Slavery towards a na'ional 
existence, or the founding of an empire whose 
b^ae should be the bowed necks and crushed 
souls of men whom God made a portion of the 
human brotherhood, which has not met the 
Btern, opposing judgment and conscience of my 
constituents. Loving Freedom at the Brsl, 
they broke every manacle within the State. 
Before yon can force them into an acknowledg- 
me.nt of its existence there, you mufet turn the 
army of a Xerxes upon them, and crush the 
wall of human hearts, which, flying from the 
cottages and palaces within its borders, will 
close up in solid column for the defence oi 
their sovereign rights. Sir, man-stealing is a 
crime oj, magnitude in our State. Even the 
making of a claim to the possession of another 
human body, containing a living soul, subjects 
the claimant to arrest and trial under our stat- 
ute. Such is the love of liberty and the sense 
of equal justice in the bosoms of our people. 
I esteem it one of the proudest acts of my life, 
that by the sufTrages of my own townsmen I 
was enabled, by my vote in the Legislature, to 
give that spirit vitality in a statute law ; and 
that, too, because, in common with my fellow- 
citizens, I believe that the rights of all men are 
the gift of God, and the claims of property are 
not to be mentioned in the same breath. 

Sir, when the Convention which framed our 
Federal Constitution had under advisement 
that portion of the report of the committee of 
detail which recommended a tax upon the im- 
portation of CBTiain persons, (meaning slaves,) 
one of the brightest lights of our State — whose 
legal power was second to none in the coun- 
try — of whose name and fame every son of 
Connecticut is proud, arose in his place in op 
position to the measure, simply upon the ground 
" that it implied thty -lotre properfi/." Not 
that it was asserted in the provision, but simply 
that it might thereafter be implied. Who, sir, 



riees up to convict the pore-hearted, clear-head- 
ed Roger Sherman, in th^se utterances of the 
sentiments of the people of our State, so long 
ago as 1787 ? When, in the furtherance of the 
mad schemes of Slavery propagandists, in 1814, 
the broad acres of the Louifiana purchase 
were devoted to chattel servitude, and when, in 
1819, the peninsula of Florida was added as a 
slave State to our Confederation, the people of 
Connecticut stood in opposition. And in the 
exciting scenes which convulsed the country, 
over the admission of Missouri as a slave State, 
and which finally culminated in what was sup- 
posed to be a permanent barrier to the exten- 
sion of Slavery northward, the citizens of my 
State, were not second in their hostility to this 
scheme for the extension of the slave system, 
even though a hunker portion of their Repre- 
sentatives upon this floor betrayed their princi- 
ples. When Slavery rested temporarily from 
" its goings to and fro " in the country, seeking 
an avenue for extension, and assailed the sa- 
cred right of petition in these Halls, from 1835 
to 1838, my constituents were no indifferent 
spectators of that great struggle. And when 
the same power, under the " gag resolutions," 
brought " the venerable sage of Quincy " to 
the bar of this House for the presentation of a 
petition, the slumbering spirit of even our staid 
conservatives was aroused. 

1q 1844 you opened up the propagandist 
scheme afresh, and expended millions of the 
money of the people to take " The Lone Star 
Republic " into the bosom of the Confederacy; 
providing that from this prolific political womb 
should be born, at times suitable for the future 
emergencies which might arise in the Slavery- 
extending scheme, four slaveholding sovereign- 
ties. Did Connecticut tamely and silently ac- 
quiesce in this wholesale bar'er of those princi- 
ples enunciated by Roger Sherman and hia 
compeers of the Constitutional Convention ? 
She has a history upon that transaction, and it 
is written. 

In 1850 you enacted a man-hunting, heaven- 
defying law, which abrogated the Divine pre- 
cept, "to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, 
and shelter the oppressed ; " turned every acre 
of our land into a Federal hunting ground for 
men ; made our citizens bloodhounds by law 
to reclaim captives, under the pains and penal- 
tiies of a forfeiture of our hard-earned property 
and imprisonment in a felon's cell. Did we 
bow and cringe and swear allegiance in the loss 
of our principles and manhood ? Sir, you can- 
not get a corporal's guard in the whole State 
to enforce the edict, not even of that so-called 
Democratic conservative portion of our citizens 
who swear by James Buchanan and the Le- 
eompton Constitution, the Federal patronage 
of course included. You but stirred up our 
yeomanry to the contemplation of how they 
could best preserve their sovereignty a3 a State, 
and their rights as individuals, against the ag- 
gressions of that Slavery propagandism which 



then, as it has since, held complete control 
over the general Adminia^ration. The action 
of the two great national Conventions, ia;norirg 
all discussion of a question which involved our 
dearest rights, and pi-omieing, by all the force 
of party machinery, "to crush out" discussion, 
buried in a sepulchre too deep for the ghost of 
a chance of resurrection, the old Whig party in 
the State, and passed the Democratic party, its 
opponent, through the damp vaults leading to 
its final sepulchre — hanging a dark and murky 
pall over its prospects of ever becoming a vie 
torious political organization there, unless by a 
y division of the Anti-Slavery forces upon local 
'•^ questions. The repeal of the Missouri restric 
s tion — the prolific dam of this whole brood of 
^ villainies against the people of Kansas, from 
"-o Atchison's invasion to the confjummation of the 
? scheme in the prtsentation of the Pro-S'avery 
~~ Lecompton instrument, has decimated the 
already broken ranks of the Administration 
party in the State. The Died Scitt decision 
of the Sapreme Judicial bench of the country 
has shown them that even the sanctity of our 
highest judicial seats: has been invaded by this 
rabid spirit of Slavery extension, and that the 
robe of the judge is no proof against the parti- 
san madness of the day. 

Sir, the people of Connecticut are not slaves, 
nor the sons of slaves. They are not vassals 
of the South, nor the children of vassais. They 
are, as a body, legitimate in descent from the 
Pilgrims of Plymou'.h, aqd glory in their Puri 
tanic character and ancestry. Their early laws 
recognised, and were basied upon, those Divine 
precepts which th y believed and practiced. 
Their cede of statutory obligations, from the 
founding cf their first colony down to the pres- 
ent time, will gather fresh lustre by a compari- 
son with the cotemporaneous code of any other 
colony or country. She will blush for the weak- 
ness of a son of hers who, in the presence of 
the nation's Representatives, asserts as fact what 
has no foundation in her legal history, hut was 
the jeer of the infidel, in consequence of her 
Puritan character. I allude, sir, to that re- 
markable feature in the speech of my colleague 
from the fourth district, [Mt. Bishop,] assert- 
ing the former existence of a fabulous law, and 
passing in review the statutes of our State 
against the violations of the moral law, to ex- 
cite the jeers and laughter of Representatives 
whom it would not injure to be brought under 
their restraining influence. Sir, we have a 
" Sabbath law," a " gambling law," a law 
against "profanity," and a Connecticut "liquor 
law," with their pains and penaliies. The 
atmosphere of this corrupt Federal ciiy would 
be much purer, if those laws were a portion of 
the code of this District, and had Connecticut 
men to enforce them. We have also a law 
against "bearing f.ilse witness," or slander; 
and I much mistake the spirit of the citizens 
of my colleague's district, if they do not enter 
up the judgment of an overwhelming majority' 



against him in the election which is to come. 

Sir, a majority of the citizens of my Sfa^e 
occupy that happy social position whi;h is a 
medium between a wealthy aristocracy o.i t^-e 
one hand, and a poverty which is generally 
wedded to ignorance, upon the other. Our 
farmers cultivate their limited acres; cur arti- 
sans and mechanics, by their intelligeiice and 
skill, always find employment at a remuaerative 
compensation, unless the fountain of labor dries 
up ; our merchants are second to none in the 
commerce chambers of the country; and our 
"schoolmasters are always abroad." There 
are but; few who do not acquire a sufBciericy of 
wealth to educate their sons and daughters for 
any walk of life which they select, and to frant 
them sufficient assistance with which to com- 
mence their career. The result is, laey are 
virtuous; for, as a general rule, the idlera 
are the vicious ones of a community. They 
are intelligent, and thoroughly posted in all the 
principles, history, and present operations of 
our Government. They are political ihitkera 
from their youth. What passes in these Evilis, 
what is spcken in debate here, is read in their 
daily papers, and commented upon t.t their 
evening firesides. With such a people for a 
constituency — acknowledging the dignity and 
rights of labor, gcorcicg the coarse taunts ut- 
tered against them, and loathing the system 
which hcild.i a fellow labarer in the most abject 
vassalage, as a chattel, a thing, hurlirg buck 
in your teeth {.he pronunciamie?ito whica se-ka 
to debase and degrade them — I do not wonder 
that the small remnant of your alave-ex ending 
party in Connecticut lifts up its prayer tliat you 
cease the utterance of such comparisrna and 
such slanders, for its very existence Srtke. 

I counsel no such silence. No party gocd, 
no party existence, shall ever humiliate me 
enough to ask the South, or any seccion or 
party, to play the hypocrite in order to 3U8tain 
my political life. If the spirit of aristocracy ia 
in the South; if, in its narrow judgment, the 
great laboring class of the North is yokrd with 
the abject servitude of the slavea of the Sontb, 
to form "the mud-sills" of our political edifice, 
out with it, then, with all that openness of char- 
acter with which you are accredited 1 Yon will 
soon find these despised "mud-sills" of the 
North rising up your peers, and towering above 
you in the future history of this Government, 
even now being regenerated by their awakening. 

Sir, my colleague may speak for the party, 
when he beseeches his Southern allies to believe 
what they please, but to keep their counsel 
from the Northern public ear. I speak for the 
people, when I ask you to make a clean breast 
of your views and designs. As reasoners, if 
they caF,not answer your sophistries; as poli- 
ticians, if they cannot go as deep as the pro- 
foundeat of ycu in the science of government; 
as readers of our own history, if they cannot 
rebut and overthro-v your assumptions concern- 
ing the nature and extent of the powers of our 



federative GoTernment ; then, sir, they will, in j 
the spirit of a true manhood, take their eeatB at 
your feet as pupils. But, sir, you can nevfr 
blot out their hatred to Slavery, or seduce them 
into creditine: its morality and beneficence as 
a system. Born upon free soil, inhalin/^ a free 
air, educated in free schools, and taught a free 
gospel, il is beyond any earthly power to make 
them love the eystem of a forced servitude, much 
more pui^rait to the dictum cf ils n-iasters. If 
the wcrkiii?-men of Connecticut were the only 
slaves in this Confederacy, it would be annihi- 
lated in a few short hours by a revolution which 
would be decisive and iiual. 

Sir, it is true that we have a term of political 
reproach in use among^ us ^hich is eigniflcant, 
and utters its own meaning when pronounced. 
A "dou?hface" is peculiar to Northern lati- 
tudes. The race has flourished somewhat ex- 
tensively in the past, but at present'' is g'rowirg 
small by degrees, and beautifully leas." Our 
citizens may entertain great respect for a man 
born vpyn a Southern plantation, and reared 
amid tbt^ ii-fluences of the chattel system, taught 
in inf&i;cv,and strengthened in bis rising man- 
hood, iu the belief that it is the best social sys- 
tem for all communities ; taught to demand 
even iio acknowledgment as an equal to a free 
system. I say, our people may entertain a great 
respect for such a man, but none at all for his 
princ'ples upon that queslion. But they have 
small respect, and instinctively inquire for a 
cause. •■■ h<'n a son of their Slate, or of the North, 
becom^ " olastic, and susceptible of being mould- 
ed into 'he image and likeness of a Southern par- 
tisan ch;kttfcl in the political market. Such seem 
to take the name of "doughface," as you would 
take an epidemic disease — that is, " in the nat- 
ural way." I do not deny but some honest men, 
who honestly entertain opinions favorable to the 
expansion of the slave system — who see in 
" King Cotton " the pride and glory as well as 
the saviour of their country, may have this badge 
applied to !hem unjustly. But it is iheir mis- 
fortune, ar d they must wait until the final judg- 
ment expos'^s their motives, when they will cer- 
tainly be ricjhted. It is a compound word, of 
such significance in its application, that it will 
be hard to crowd it out of the Northern political 
vocabulary while a single case cf applicability 
remains. 

My colleague admits that the Democracy of 
Connecticut "accord to the South the right to 
' move into the Territories of the United States. 

* «ji^A//iejrj[)ro/?cr<// whenever and wlierever {hey 

* please, so long as they are Territories," (I quote 
his language,) and then coolly asserts, in the 
face of history, that this was one of " the com- 
promises of the Constitution 1 " Sir, he has 
studied that instrument, and the history of the 
Convention which framed it, to little purpose, 
if he has not yet learned that the claimed rights, 
nay, more, the legal existence of Slavery under 
that Constitution, were denied a place in the 
inatmrnent. He would have been correct, had 



he stated that it was one of the late compro- 
mises of the boasted National Democratic party. 
He may be pardoned if, like many of his polit- 
ical friends, he esteems the Pro-Slavery Dem- 
ocratic Platform his own and his party's Con- 
stitution. But the people of Connecticut do not 
accord that right, either by an interpolation of 
cur national charter or at the dictum of party 
leaders. 

Sir, the D,emocratic party of my State has 
furnished its full quota of doughfaces to aid 
this system of slave propagandism. In times 
of high party excitement over local questions, 
they have thrown a crop of this political seed 
to the surface; but almost invariably it has 
been with the protestations of opposition to 
Slavery extension, rolling like oil from their 
tongues. When the repeal of the Missouri 
restriction was consummated, many of its 
prominent men were staggered, ar.d a majority 
of its representation upon this floor recorded 
their votes against it ; but they soon succumbed 
to Southern dictation, and took their old places 
in the ranks. But they have persistently de- 
ceived their people in relation to their true 
position upon this question. Their political 
pettifogf^ers, in the last Presidential election, 
made flaming appeals to the Democracy to 
sustain " Buchanan, Breckinridge, and Free 
Kansas," under the workings of this new light 
of the party, named " popular sovereignty." 
They coolly argued, that under the new system, 
Slavery had met its last fee, had occupied its 
last inch of virgin soil in this country, and that 
the national Democracy had effectually checked 
its advancing tide. That was the local doc- 
trine fitted for the latitude of Connecticut, and 
the campaign in which it was used. Now that 
*' Buchanan, Breckinridge, and Free Kansas," 
has culminated in " Lecompton," and in forc- 
ing the system of Slavery upon a people con- 
trary to their will, my colleague, speaking for 
the party which he represents, coolly proclaims 
that *' they concede the right to the South to 
move into the Territories of the United States 
with their property, (i. c, slaves.) whenever and 
xcherever they please, so long as they are Ter- 
ritories," but most pitifully begs, as a boon in 
return, that the South shall not institute un- 
healthy comparisons between their chattel 
slaves and the free mechanics of the North, to 
prove that they occupy the same socin.l and 
relative position in political society. Further 
than this, he entreats them to cea^e attempting 
to prove that it is a Divine system, for it really 
hurts the feelings of the party in Connecticut. 

The Democratic press of my State is com- 
pletely under the control of this Pro-Slavery 
Administration, without a single exception of 
which I am aware. Every publisher or editor 
has one of the teats of the national udder be- 
tween his lips, and, with his mouth full of the 
golden milk of Executive patronage, pitifully 
moans the request to his Southern brethren, to 
suppress the common sentiment held between 



them for the party's sake. The proposition of 
my colleague for the extinction of Slavery in 
the Territory of Kansas, by the purchase of the 
slaves taken there under this Democratic dec- 
trine, is perfectly consistent with those com- 
merce principles which admit the right of traf- 
fic in human flesh, and which characterize the 
hunker portion of that party. It is the utter- 
ance of a doctrine, and the recommendation 
of a " speculation," so cold-blooded and godless 
in its character, that it will shock the relifjious 
portion of hia State ; while among the infidels 
it will, as it did here, provcke laughter under 
the very ribs of the moral death which it pro- 
claim?. 

I sicken, sir, over the recital of those outrages 
against Freedom which have characterized the 
BO-called Democratic party. The child has 
changed its nature as a chameleon does its 
hues, and having become, if not black, at least 
tawny in color, should receive a new christening. 
Whatever measure it proposes, whatever act it 
performs, or whatever platform its changing 
necessities require it to inaugurate, in all these 
"the nigger" is prominent. Asserting that 
"the slave has no rights which a white man is 
bound to respect," it still iiipists that the slave 
system shall be the head and front, the Alpha 
and Omega of party allegiance and constitu- 
tional obligation. When the President of the 
United States stooped from his high position, 
and entered the partisan arena to attempt a pub- 
lic answer to a modest peti ion from some of 
the first citizens of my State, he acted consist- 
ently, judging him by the measures of the 
modern Democracy. Sir, the doctrine of polit- 
ical ethics taught in that ancient and world-re- 
nowned Alma Mater, in New Haven, does not 
tally with the bald assumptions of the political 
Hotspurs of today. Her learned professors 
are of the school of the Shermans, the Wolcotts, 
and Dwights ; and the partisan fulminations of 
the President fell harmlessly at the feet of the 
noble men whom God yet permits to linger un- 
der the shadows of her venerated walls. The 
party of the President in my State gathered no 
converts to their faith from that Presidential tilt 
with those honored citizens. 

Mr. Chairman, I have felt it due to myself 
and my constituents to say this much in expla- 
nation of their true character, social position, 
and political opinions upon the Slavery ques- 
tion. I had determined with myself not to oc- 
cupy the time of the House, but to pronounce 
my own as well as their judgment upon that 
feature of Slavery extension now under the con- 
sideration of Congress, in a negative vote upon 
every phase which it should assume. I have 
no desire to rehearse the catalogue of invasions 
and frauds practiced against the people of Kan- 
sas Territory. Neither have I the taste to dis- 
sect so foul a mass of political corruption as 
was, in my opinion, embodied in that Lecomp- 
ton Convention. For the same reason, I do not 
defiira to analyze the child that partakes so 



largely the paternal nature and character. 
Other and abler bands have done it; and, in 
my opinion, most successfully. Oq the face of 
the whole proceedinos, from the first invasion 
downwards, it is marked wiih violence, fraud, 
and a Pro-Slavery fanaticism almost insane. 
Its leaders and abettors have been men high 
in authority, and blood-red murders have fol- 
lowed its serpentine trail. Its consummation 
has come to be a party test, and its legal crown- 
ing will be a blow which will drive that party 
ataffgeriug to its political death. 

Duripg the recess of Congress I visited the 
Territory, conversed with its citizens, and 
gathered up as much of its unwritten history as 
circumstances permitted. It harmonizes with 
the record already upon the page of history 
and before the country. I stood by the row of 
graves in the open field, on the summit of the 
bill which overlooks the city of Lawrence, and 
from a resident learned the history of this col- 
umn of sleeping martyrs. History may be 
ransacked in vain to find a parallel of brutali- 
ty, savage hate, and fiendish malignity, which 
brought these men to their bloody graves. If 
" the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the 
church," then the blood of freemen is not lost 
when it is yielded up to establish free institu- 
tions. If the strong influence of this Adminis- 
tration, and the force of party discipline, shall 
place this Constitution as a yoke upon the 
necks of a subdued people, I still shall have 
confidence that the sons of revolutionary sires 
will have enough of their fathers' spirit to 
emancipate themselves, and found for them- 
selves a domain of Freedom, peaceably if they 
can — forcibly, if that is the only alternative. 
The arbitrament of war is a court of last ap- 
peal, and should not be tried until the hope of 
a peaceful revolution has exhausted itself. 
When that crisis is reached, the people must 
decide to be slaves of freemen. 

Mr. Chairman, before closing, I wish briefly 
to assign the reasons why I shall cast my vote 
against every step which looks to the consum- 
mation of this fraud. 

In the first place, reflecting the sentiments 
of my constituents, I will not vote to admit a 
single inch of slave territory lying within the 
limits covered by the Missouri rpstriclion of 
1820. Its abrogation was in bad faith, and 
was designed, to say no more, to xGn6.tT possible 
what had solemnly been adjudged, and for a 
long series of years acquiesced in, as impossible. 
I have no faith — had none — in the catch- 
phrase of " popular sovereignty " with which 
that measure was gilded, in order to screen the 
possibility or the purpose beneath it. It was 
asserted by our coolest men, at the time of the 
passage of the Kansas-Nebraeka act, that the 
repeal of the Missouri restriction would result 
in the formation of a slave State within the 
limits from which the restriction was removed. 
Their prediction finds a fulfilment. It comes 
here with a slave Constitution, in spite of the 



6 



dopma of " popular sovereignty," and a ma- 
jority of ten thousand votes of its citizens cast 
asaiust it. But, sir, if every man in thie Ter 
ritory desired its admission with Slavery, under 
the position which I have assumed, I could not, 
and would not, vote in its favor. 

Another reason for its rejection would be 
found in the frauds connected with the forma- 
tion of the Constitution presfnted, evea though 
the first could be waived. Why, sir, if testimo- 
ny is to be credited — and Democratic Govern- 
ors and Secretaries join in concurrence with 
the other proof spread before the face of the 
people — then this instrument is unworthy the 
respfctful attention of the Congress of a free 
country, and should be kicked lustily from these 
Halls. If saved at all, it must be by techni- 
calities and special pleading. An instrument 
of this nature, which is to determine the politi- 
cal and social complexion of a sovereign State, 
should not be saved merely because i' was able 
to pass through such a gauntlet as this. We 
are not a petty court, sitting for th-i trial of a 
meagre suit at law, to be governed by its petty 
technicalities, granting to the special pleader 
his verdict, in consequence of hij ingenuity in 
shaping his case, or artfully and skillfully dodg- 
ing the tough points of his opponent by legal 
quibbles. As the nation's tribunes, we are sit- 
ting in judgment on the' le^al birth of a new 
Commonwealth seeking to be add,id to this 
Confederacy. Standing upon the doctrine of 
popular sovereignty, and in the face of ihe ten 
thousand majority of its citizens against this 
Constitution, no Northern Democrat can, in my 
opinion, vote for this rejected instrument, and 
be true to his pledges to the people. 

If the voice of the people is to be authorita- 
tive in the founding of new States out of the 
common domain, without the interposition o( 
Congress, then it should bear their popular ver- 
dict of approval, clear as the sun at noonday. 
Sir, popular sovereignty does not weigh a feather 
in the balance, when opposed to the schemes of 
the slave propagandists of the day. They mean 
Slavery in Kansas, whether a majority of its 
citizens approve or disapprove. They mean two 
slave-State Sanators in the other wing of the Cap- 
itol, for four and six years, re«pectively. All the 
irrupiions of the Goths and Vandals of Missouri 
in the different elections; all the slaughter of 
Democratic Governors by the national Execu- 
tive ; the quartering of a Federal army within 
her borders; the refusal to enroll her citizens 
upon the poll-lists; the disfranchisement of nine 
teen counties in the pretended election for a 
Constitntional Convention; the creation of a 
peripatetic regent and supreme dictator, who 
holds the unannounced certificates of the late 
election for Slate officers in his breeches pock- 
et; his absence from the Territory for moetha, 
and his hanging aronnd the Federal city, and 
the reading of the author of the popular-sover- 
eignty doctrine out of the pale of the party, be- 
caube be cannot shut bis eyes against this out- 



rageous swindle — all, all, sir, make the grand 
design of the party abd this Administration per- 
fectly appat-ent. Tbey mpan a ''nio!??r" in K-in- 
sas, or no Kansas in the Union. Popular sov- 
ereignty is well enough as a text upon which to 
predicate speechee to please the Norihern Dem- 
ocratic ear; but when it rears a barritr against 
the extension of Slavery, it is to the S->uth a 
bird of diCFrtrent plumage. It will be difficult 
for the people of ihe North to hamonizs the 
pitiful pettifogging of the friends of Lecompton 
to carry this measure, with the stern popular 
verdict of tea thousand majority of the sover- 
eigns against it. 

Still another reason for my opposition is 
found in the fict that it is not for the interest 
of my State to depart from the first inaugurated 
policy of our Government under the Cjnstitu- 
tion, to which I have so britfly adverted in my 
opening remarks. The danger to this Govern- 
ment lies in its strong tendency to centraliza- 
tion, fsderalion, or tco much ct-ntral powtr. 
The Federal Government is of limited powers; 
and I will go as far as the furthest to give the 
sacred instrument of its exiftenca a ttnct con- 
struction. Far beyond the most extensive 
speculations of our fathers has Executive pat- 
ronage even now reached, in its rapidly-ang- 
meniing course. It is conceded by the coun- 
try, that an Administration in power has the 
cdds of almost two to one in a popular elec- 
tion. There is not even a village of our broad 
country iu which the President has not an 
active politicil agent, a local manager of the 
political affairs of his Administration, either 
for his own reelection or the candidate nomi- 
nated by his party to succeed him. And this 
agent muet have an uneu lied party record, or 
the axe of the Executive guillotine removes 
his ofiicial head without even saying '' by your 
leave," or consulting in the least degree the 
will of the people. But, sir, when the central 
Government takes the system of chattel slavery 
under its especial protection; when it declares 
that every rood of laud in our broad territories, 
stretching away to the Pacific ocean, is, by the 
Constitution, the legal abode of the chattel 
system, and that the central Government will 
enforce that system at the point of Federal 
bayonets, it is time that the increasing millions 
of Northern freemen should investigate and 
decide for themselves this new interpretation. 
It at one blow nationalizes the chattel system, 
hovers it under the wing of our emblematic 
bird, shielding and defending it with its angry 
beak. At the same time, it annihilates all 
that makes the property valuable to Northern 
laborers. 

If a corrupt partisan Administration usurps 
to itself the power of treading upon new ground, 
no patriot is far-sighted enough to discover the 
final results of that first misguided step. Al- 
ready an alarmed North feels about the pillars 
and strong columns which support its independ- 
ent State sovereignties, to discover the solidity 



of their foundations. Steadily increasing in 
strength as a central power, you are also as 
steadily trenching upon State rights, and you 
will yet claim the right to drive your ccffled 
slaves through the very temples of Freedom, by 
the decision and with the aid of the central 
Government. This prophecy may be esteemed 
a madness; but there are children new born in 
the Norlh who will live to witness the attempt. 
When that time comes, your Republic will be- 
come an Empire, your central Government as 
Paris is to France, and your elected President 
an Emperor. It cannot be reached but by 
revolution and blood ; but both may be averted 
by nipping in the bud this tendency to central- 
ization — this encroachment upon the rights of 
the free States of this Union. 

It is not for the interest of the ITorth to ex- 
tend the area of Slavery, for another reason. 
Your chattel system conflicts with the true in- 
terest of our Northern laborer in almost all re- 
spects. We have felt the Slavery Power press- 
ing like an incubus upon us. You dictate the 
tariff policy of the nation, and, by owning your 
own laborers, do not hesitate to attempt to en- 
force a free-trade policy, which places the la- 
bor of our free mechanics upon a level with the 
pauper labor of Europe. At your will, the gov 
ernmental screws are unloosed, or turned until 
the cry of reduction of wages rings through all 
the manufactories and artisans' shops of the 
North, or else close their doora and stop the 
hum of industry. 

No hired pauper of Europe, even though his 
remuneration for daily labor is but a scanty pit- 
tance, can compete with the owners of the hu- 
man labor machine in the South. You can re- 
strict his daily allowance to the stand-point of 
actual necessity. You can compel him under 
the lash to labor for a number of hours per day, 
which, if forced upon the paupers of Europe, 
would revolutionize every nation upon the face 
of that continent. You do not need protection 
for such labor, and self-interest alone leads you 
to the formation of a tariff that will, with the 
least possible addition essential to the carrying 
on of our Government, place in your hands the 
product of their industry at the lowest possible 
price. But, sir, the free labor of the North will 
never consent to take rank either with the pau- 
pers of Europe or the slaves of the South. It 
seeks at the hands of a paternal Government 
protection from both. Just so fast as this slave 
system expands itself, in the ratio with which 
it fills your Congressional Halls, it diminishes 
the chances for that protection which American 
industry and capital demand. I do not wonder, 
sir, that Connecticut Democracy, cheek by jowl 
with the South in her slave propagandism, and 
in striking down the dignity and rights of free 
labor, stands up in this Hall, and begs of its 
Southern coadjutors to stifle the utterance of 
their " mud-sill " sentiments, because such ut- 
terances ring the death-knell of the party. 



But there is another and higher reason than 
all, which will control my vote upon this ques- 
tiof), because it has been, is now, and I trust 
always will be, a cardinal principle of my polit- 
ical life. I do not, cannot, will not, acknowl- 
edge man's right of property in man. Born 
and educated amid the free institution^ of the 
old Commonwealth of Connecticut, I was taught 
their justice and sanctity. The study of my 
later years has but strengthened and establish- 
ed my early convictions. No doctrine is so 
abhorrent to me, sir, as that so often proclaim- 
ed in this Hall, that one man has a social, 
political, moral, nay, sir, a Divine right, to hold 
as property the living body of his feilow-man. 
It saps the foundation of all rights invested in 
man by a high Creator. It stands between an 
eternal Ruler and the accountable subject. It 
claims the power, and txercises it, of making 
nugatory Divine commands. This it does by 
holding the marriage covenant subject to the 
caprices of fortune and the dictum of another's 
will, when the Divine Authority has declared 
it permanent. It claims the power, and exer- 
cises it, of shutting up the immortal mind in 
the prison-house of ignorance, and forbids the 
application of its God-given powers in fitting 
itself for the study of that Book by whose lawa 
it must finally be judged, and through whose 
pages alone it can discover the moral beauties 
of the world's great Redeemer. It claims and 
exercises the right of selling in the public 
shambles the child of another's loins, scatter- 
ing families, without their consent, to the ex- 
tremes of its spreading dominions. It abrogates 
nature's first law of self defence. In a word, 
it lays its iron hand upon " the image of God" 
in man, and by one fell legal blow makes him 
a chattel, a thing, a beast of burden, an article 
of merchandise in the markets of the coun- 
try. 

Sir, I cannot acknowledge the existence of 
that right thus to transform a fellow man, any- 
where on this vast globe of oura, much less in 
my own native country, the boasted " land of 
the free, and the home of the brave." For that 
reason, also, I shall vote against this Lecomp- 
ton Constitution. I do not hold any party, in 
my own State or elsewhere, responsible for the 
doctrine set forth in this last reason for my 
vote against Lecompton. It will be my high- 
est pleasure to co-operate with any man differ- 
ing witii me on this fundamental question in 
any effort to strangle this fraudulent attempt 
to impose a Constitution upon an unwilling 
people in Kansas. Whatever may be the re- 
sult of this local struggle, for myself and my 
constituents, I pledge you, that there will be no 
cessation of effort until this Government is 
brought back to its early practice, and a prac- 
tical infidelity shall give place to the broad 
principles of a genuine Christianity, which was 
the glory of its noble founders. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



i'llil 



016 085 225 2 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

BUELL & BLANCHARD, PRINTERS. 

1858. 



